Brazilian startup BotCity has extended its seed round with an additional $500,000 from YCombinator, bringing its total to $3 million. The company is making a direct challenge to the low-code ethos of the robotic process automation (RPA) market, betting that for complex tasks, developers need to write actual code.
While giants like UiPath and Automation Anywhere have built multi-billion dollar businesses on accessible, often graphical, platforms for "citizen developers," BotCity argues this approach hits a wall. According to CEO Lorhan Caproni, "complex and game-changer automations can't be built by citizen developers." He explained that when processes span multiple legacy, desktop, and web systems without APIs, it becomes a job for engineers who are currently "stuck in low-code."
Coding against the low-code grain
BotCity’s pitch is an RPA stack built by developers, for developers. The platform uses computer vision to identify on-screen elements, allowing engineers to write Python code to automate tasks across any application, regardless of whether it has an API. This code-first approach is designed to give development teams the flexibility and power that low-code platforms often abstract away.
The RPA market is projected to hit $7.64 billion by 2028, and BotCity is carving out a niche by focusing on the technical user. The funding, originally led by SoftBank Latin America and Astrella, will fuel its mission to provide a developer-native alternative in a market dominated by platforms that prioritize business users. It’s a bet that the most valuable automation requires the precision of code, not just the accessibility of a drag-and-drop interface.
